e had been no trespass, knowing as he must have known,
feeling as he must have felt, that every word of that letter was
dwelling in her memory! He had, at any rate, intended that the
abominable correspondence should be clandestine. He must have been
sadly weak, to make the least of it, to have admitted such a
correspondence. "Pray tell me that you love me!" That had been the
language addressed to him only a few days since by a married lady to
whom he had once made an offer of marriage; and yet he could now come
and trample on her as though his marital superiority had all the
divinity of snow-white purity. This was absolute tyranny. But yet in
complaining to her father of his tyranny she would say nothing of
Adelaide Houghton. Of the accusations made against herself she would
certainly tell her father, unless they were withdrawn as far as her own
husband could withdraw them. For an hour after leaving him her passion
still sustained her. Was this to be her reward for all her endeavours
to become a loving wife?

They were engaged to dine that evening with a certain Mrs. Patmore
Green, who had herself been a Germain, and who had been first cousin to
the late marquis. Mary came down dressed into the drawing room at the
proper time, not having spoken another word to her husband, and there
she found him also dressed. She had schooled herself to show no sign
either of anger or regret, and as she entered the room said some
indifferent words about the brougham. He still looked as dark as a
thunder-cloud, but he rang the bell and asked the servant a question.
The brougham was there, and away they went to Mrs. Patmore Green's. She
spoke half-a-dozen words on the way, but he hardly answered her. She
knew that he would not do so, being aware that it was not within his
power to rise above the feelings of the moment. But she exerted herself
so that he might know that she did not mean to display her ill-humour
at Mrs. Patmore Green's house.

Lady Brabazon, whose sister had married a Germain, was there, and a
Colonel Ansley, who was a nephew of Lady Brotherton's; so that the
party was very much a Germain party. All these people had been a good
deal exercised of late on the great Popenjoy question. So immense is
the power of possession that the Marquis, on his arrival in town, had
been asked to all the Germain houses in spite of his sins, and had been
visited with considerable family affection and regard; for was he not
the head of them